Billgrimage

[Benjamin Zimmer]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/052805dntexbillgrimage.ed922dd6.html

Dallas Morning News

'Billgrims' boost Clinton centers
Museum reaps benefit of tourists' interest in presidential library

07:34 PM CDT on Friday, May 27, 2005
Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The summer travel season is here. The Clinton
Presidential Library is drawing more than 1,500 visitors a day. And 115
miles away in Hope, the director of Bill Clinton's birthplace museum is
seeing a new tourism phenomenon: "Billgrimage."

"People are coming from the library saying they're making a Billgrimage to
Arkansas; it's so cute," Crystal Altenbaumer says, giggling.

She has a right to delight in this new word: These pilgrims to
all-things-Clinton are helping resurrect the Clinton Birthplace's
suffering bottom line.

[etc.]


--Ben Zimmer